Star Trek : Archer And Crew
by Gojirob
Summary: Drama, humor and parodies aboard the NX-01
1. Midnight At The Oasis

**Midnight At The Oasis**

** By Rob Morris**

**STARSHIP ENTERPRISE NX-01, 2151**

Archer anxiously awaited the trial run. T'Pol stated that her response from Ambassador Soval seemed very nearly an excited one, and all knew that Admiral Forrest would want this to succeed. Trip and Reed set up the tech, Hoshi made sure the makeshift console would neither implode nor explode, and Mayweather worked every inch of the basic math. Tucker looked at his friend, smiled and hit the main switch.

"Jonathan Archer—meet Henry Archer!"

The image formed, and never once got past the fuzzy stage before de-rezzing entirely. All stood stunned, and all were silent, until Archer shrugged.

"That—dad of mine. He's---something else?"

* * *

Tucker sighed openly.

"We were sold a pig in a poke. Plain and simple."

T'Pol chose to ignore the metaphor, at least in part.

"We were not sold anything. The technology was freely given. I will concede, though, it clearly did not perform as advertised."

Hoshi threw up her hands.

"Not a single nano-relay failed to connect. All systems were, for want of a better term, talking to each other in the same language, and on the same comprehension level."

A bleary-eyed Mayweather pushed away his data-reader.

"There is not so much as a slash in the middle of a line out of place. I will be a while before refocusing. Forget guiding the ship. I may need some help getting to my quarters."

Reed seemed like he had been shaking his head for days, not hours.

"There is no reason it should not have worked, just as it did for Liana and Ezral's people."

The disappointment was tangible on all fronts, and when Archer was forced to write the report, it was done so reluctantly.

"We had hopes that the technology given to us by the crew of the Kantaran vessel would propel us perhaps two centuries forward in terms of holographic technology. We had ideas about holographic crew, adventures in truly interactive, totally immersive environments, and, for those that needed it—companionship, even if it is just someone to talk to. But despite an able crew of my own and access to scientists across allied space, the Kantaran technology failed to work on our ship because---because---"

Archer stopped inputting the document and saved it. He walked out of his quarters, and up to the Bridge, where most of those who had tried to adapt the would-be breakthrough technology. He looked around, and raised the one valid question no one had yet asked.

"Why didn't it work?"

Once they realized what he was talking about, Tucker stated the obvious.

"Sir, if we had the slightest idea why it didn't work, we'd be—making it work. I know the kind of optitronic relays that ship's core uses. Didn't help a damn bit, though."

Mayweather refused to even think about all that data again, unless someone was to pin the failure directly on him. No one did, so he kept to his station. T'Pol could add no more to the mix.

"It is not enough to state that the technology was incompatible with ours. It accepted power from our systems, without detriment or incident. Technology that was truly incompatible yet accepted power from our systems should have damaged, perhaps severely, both input and output."

Hoshi had moved to do something the instant Archer had shown up. She broke a link just as her turn seemed to come around.

"I managed to contact a colony very near the Kantaran homeworld. I asked them about the holographic technology in question."

Archer knew he was not going to like the answer.

"Say anything except 'They said what holo-tech?' Miss Sato."

She shrugged.

"They did mention greeting cards that use holograms. They even recommended a good store to get them at. On Kantara Prime."

Archer prepared to go back to his ever-more daunting report.

"Where's Reed?"

Emerging from the lift with Phlox in tow, Reed answered.

"I was down with the Doctor getting something for the headache this thing has given me."

Phlox nodded.

"A headache he has then kindly passed on to me. Fortunately, mine was of a much shorter duration."

Archer breathed in some hope.

"You know why the holo-tech didn't work."

Phlox's face didn't quite show that.

"I have a theory."

* * *

"Captain, I don't see why I have to leave the room."

"Captain Kuulan, if we reveal this potential flaw to any of the holographic crew, it could cause a logic loop that will disrupt the integrity of your programs. Ezral will decide if our concern is warranted, and then he will tell you. Alright?"

For a moment, it seemed that Enterprise's trip back to the small planet was to be in vain. But at a nod from Ezral, Kuulan relented. When they were alone, the non-holos spoke freely.

"Captain, I'm glad you're here. Unfortunately, repairs have not been going well."

Tucker tried to keep the burden of explosive information from his face.

"Just how not well is not well, Ezral?"

"Why, Mister Tucker, do I believe you're keeping something back from me?"

Archer cut back in.

"Maybe you should go into police work, when you get back home—if you get back home. Ezral, we tried like anything to make your holographic matrix work on our ship. But what seemed simple down here proved impossible up there—and then we contacted some other Kantares. Sir, they had never heard of any holo-tech remotely approaching yours."

Tucker nodded.

"Kinda makes sense, when you think about it. With Vulcans and traders hitting every spot you can think of at least once, tech like yours should be the genie in the bottle. Other holograms should at least be near to yours, but none are."

Ezral did not look like a guilty man, but he did look like a cornered one.

"I'd like to ask you two gentlemen just what you're driving at."

Archer sat down.

"Doctor Phlox had the time to really sort through those scans he made of you and Liana. Those people aren't holograms, anymore than they are flesh and blood. You created them—or recreated them, using the power of your mind."

Ezral looked faint.

"But you saw the holo-emitters!"

"Yes. But we think they were just set up by you to stabilize your basic fantasy. Phlox believes the ion storm that marooned you may have given you these abilities."

"Can they do that?"

Archer shrugged.

"Mister Reed thinks that, under the right conditions, they can tear a whole in the universe itself. Ezral, your repairs aren't going well and they never will go well. Those people aren't able to do anything you can't do yourself, or know how to do. Your power, for want of a better term, must have limits."

Ezral sat down with his guests.

"Weeks ago, after you left, I finally resolved the difficult choice I made between my daughter and my responsibilities to the crew. My guilt is something I'm at least at peace with. Why wouldn't I realize then what they were?"

Tucker breathed in.

"I think the simple answer is Liana. Only part of your recreation of the crew came from guilt. The other part came from fear."

"Fear?"

Tucker braced himself for what he had to say.

"Your daughter is becoming a woman. You have eyes, and you saw that. You like as not also worried about what can happen to children and parents who are in isolation when the children start to grow up."

Ezral showed in his face that he felt the truth of it all.

"You must think I'm a monster. But she looks so like her mother at that age. I had noticed, but I swear to you…"

Tucker cut him off.

"You're not a monster. You're a man who missed his wife, his friends, and who desperately wanted to protect his little girl—even if you felt that you needed to protect her from yourself, should the loneliness prove too much to stay sane."

Ezral at first seemed heartened, but then his face sank again.

"Is even she real? How can I be sure she didn't die too, and her not being a hologram was, as Captain Archer said, just an anchor to keep my fantasy world grounded?"

Archer bit down.

"Doctor Phlox has some herbs that will temporarily and safely shut down your brain entirely. Anything you created at that point would fade away, and the odds are, you would not be able to simply recreate them."

"I must know. But the crew? Can't I just wish them up with me?"

Tucker shook his head.

"You anchored them in the false-premise holographic matrix, in your own mind. You would have to know how you did all that to start, and I'd lay odds it was mostly subconscious."

"So—I built a box with circuits and data cards and told myself I'd made a scientific breakthrough. Captain—let's get aboard your ship. I and Liana. It would be unfair to have her realize suddenly that she isn't real, should something happen to me. Better that it happen swiftly, if it does."

* * *

Phlox rang the chime to Archer's quarters, and was bid to enter.

"I am delighted to report that Miss Liana is and always was with us. Mister Reed descended to the world below—the ship had years worth of decay. Ezral is for the moment, so delighted by his daughter's reality, he is taking it better than he might later. While he is resting, she is in the fine hands—or is that clutches?—of our own Mister Tucker, who is regaling her with a humorous ditty apparently about an ancestor of his named Old Dan."

Archer tweaked the existing report, written in an optimistic mode that happily proved accurate, and then transmitted it. He was glad to have it done before they reached the nearest Kantaran world.

"I'm glad for both of them—sorry for their crew, whatever their true existence, but selfishly enough, I am really sorry that the technology did not pan out. Holograms on that level could have given us so much. The mind really boggles."

Phlox seemed skeptical.

"For both good and bad, Captain. Some forms of entertainment, like narcotics, can prove addictive to the marginalized."

"C'mon, Doc—a Holo-addict?"

"Why not? Ezral will need to take Psi-inhibitors the rest of his days to keep back from his own addictive fantasy. He wants to let his wife rest in peace, but he doesn't know how he could do without her touch. Yet even if carnal companionship is taken out of the equation, a lonely awkward sort with no friends could lose themselves in such a world."

Archer remembered a comment made on the planet below, one that had not sat well with Phlox, during their initial investigation.

"Maybe your holo-addict will just to make friends with a Holographic Doctor."


	2. Merchandise

**Merchandise**  
by Rob Morris

Before continuing in her personal journal, Hoshi checked the back of her pants for the seventieth time. They were up, on her, and had no holes, so she sat back down.

"We chose to ignore their distress call. Too many things didn't add up. Oddities in the message they were broadcasting, that seemed to overplay their plight. Oddities in the sector they were 'stranded' in, where reflected starlight strength is so great, we could run the impulse engines on solar alone. Oddities in their supposed crew size, very suddenly shifting downward on the third message, as though to make us less worried about being overpowered. We chose to ignore their distress call, but all that did was let them know that we were smart, wealthy, and had something very valuable that we were practiced in protecting. Before this, I would have thought it was the warp drive."

She looked over at the door to her quarters. The heavy but small waste receptacle was positioned just so. Anyone rushing in, after having defeated the new lock, would not be able to go directly for her.

"They pursued us, and I realized from translated Andorian documents that these were the ships of 'those who strike for gain', a species of piratical clans supposedly outside the Syndicate whose 'Capo Clan' for want of a better term outright owned several worlds located in or around Orion's Bow. I had adrenalin-fueled dreams of being a Susan B. Hoshi, stalking the stars, overturning every last male enclave of absolute power, a superheroine ready to kick hard between the jerks' legs. That fantasy faded fast. The nightmare was about to start."

She stopped, closed her eyes, and imagined Archer touching her on the shoulder. The exercise continued until she ran out of crew she knew by name, and she fought back a loud gasp.

"The space-pod rammed our lock, fusing them together without truly damaging our presumably valuable ship. Pasty-Chalk faced, they poured in, weapons drawn and ready to fire. They looked gaunt, and thin, but their weapons were more than mere lasers. They cut Jane Letcar in half, and then pulled back. The one who ordered the trigger pulled was killed by a commander. Like us, I thought? Then I considered what the village elders must have done to the farmer that killed the golden goose. I watched them, from behind a barrel, as they undressed her body, focusing their scans on what I must euphemistically call access points. They smiled, but it wasn't a prurient smile. As I see that smile again and again, it was that of a hunter who just found a new breed of deer with three antlers and twice as much meat. So they went looking for more. They went looking for me."

Hoshi pushed herself away from the table, just slightly. Its closeness felt too stifling.

"I crawled while I could not be seen at all. I squat walked when I thought they were merely distracted. I walked upright, hugging corners when I thought they might have heard me. I moved on my toes alone when I knew they'd heard something. And when I heard their clunky armor creak and shift repeatedly, I ran like hell. Because they now had me in their sights."

Her scrub-sink and exfoliation brush provided less comfort each time, but she would not stop using them thrice-daily for the next several weeks. Phlox would end up having to use a progressive salve on certain raw spots. Hoshi resumed.

"Call it pathetic, but I wanted to hear my Captain's voice. I got Malcolm, and then Travis, when I finally reached a comm-relay. I had to scream at them to get them to seal off the portion of the ship I was in. I had to threaten dear friends with the bringing of dereliction charges. I may or may not have been the proverbial damsel in distress, but I could not and would not have them playing knights' errant. Because the evil knights weren't taking prisoners. They were taking heads."

Hoshi saw in her memory a vid about how all the older vids, about crazed criminals and nomadic immortals were just plain wrong. Short of an industrial tool or the like, heads simply did not come off cleanly or in one bold stroke. One horror piece about a legend-obsessed lunatic had been taken strongly to task for a window-frame decapitation using a thin sheet of glass. But Hoshi's horror was real, and the vid was wrong. The pirates' blades were the thing of fictions, and it spoke of a species dedicated to finding ways of making up close and personal brutal murder routine.

"It wasn't like in fiction. They weren't waiting around a corner. Five of them overtook and literally fell on me, their weight throwing hard to the deck. Only then did I stop and wonder why I was such a locked-on target. They must have passed several other different crew members, firing at or pursuing almost none of them. I didn't wonder for long. He held his weapon to my head and shouted something that tonally came across as a crude admonition to accept what was about to occur. I was thrown around to my stomach. At the top of my pants, I felt four fingers put themselves under the hem and then digging past my panties. As he was about to tug, time slowed to an infinite crawl."

Hoshi honestly wondered where the hell the ice water in front of her came from. She saw herself fetching it, and putting it down. But certain simple events now existed for her only in disconnect.

"If I had actually understood the exact words he had used, I might have been more scared and stayed put. But since I was a translator unable to translate, I focused on the oddest thing. I focused on the fact that the part of me this vile man was about to expose and then use was a part that I had not yet shown to any man on board, even those I had dated. It seems purely irrelevant, but my reactive mind wanted to kill my fear and crank up my anger. I was about to be violated. A position that couples use in trust and ecstasy was about to be turned to one of faceless destruction. The power and good feelings this creature would never know on his own he was trying to take from me, forever. Yet still I can't figure out how my opened palm met his nose, or how it struck so hard from so weak a position. Maybe the sight of his one hand reaching for his belt buckle made me not care anymore about his friends, or his weapon."

Her left eye traced the room without moving her head at all. Her right eye then did the same.

"I am most pointedly not the super-woman Captain Archer described in his log, after the incident. Yes, I killed those who held me down, punishing them for thinking so little of me that they left me a free hand. Yes, I armed some of our people with the invaders' weapons, making damned sure to wreck their containers, because I wanted my friends' heads back. Yes, I booby-trapped the pod, returning it to the now-dead people who wanted us solely because we were smart enough to have good things. No, not a super-woman. I am a little girl who didn't want her pants pulled down. Especially not by bullies from another town."

She breathed in.

"Of course, that's a ridiculous, demeaning, self-disrespecting thing to say. But I refuse to make myself into the Divine Wind of Enterprise. I know that I was to be the next step, after the horrid pictures they took of Jane. The first sample. Unlike some species we've encountered, these Orion pirate clans do not withdraw after a major defeat. So another human woman has been made their first victim, whenever it occurs. I won't be there. I don't know her. I can't help her. And that kills me inside. She will be made a little girl before these monsters, and she'll feel the rest of the horror as the tug is completed, and the buckle is reached. I can only do what I did, helping myself and those around me."

She almost shut off the recording, and then added on.

"But I must find a way to do more."

The comm-box sounded.

"Hoshi? It's Reed."

"Yes, Malcolm."

"Errrr..I just received the oddest request."

She tried to care.

"Okay. But how--how stands the ship?"

"Well, had they used gas or some-such, like the intruders who we think tried to chat with Porthos, we could have all been taken out quite easily. Doctor Phlox thinks that their very acquisitiveness made them avoid utilizing that, for fear one of us would have an allergic or toxic reaction."

*Don't harm the potential goods*, she thought in outrage.

"What was the odd request, Malcolm?"

"It's our Tellarite and Andorian guests. They've asked me to ask you if you would one day consent to meet with their wives and daughters. They want them to be exposed to you, apparently."

Thanking Reed, Hoshi Sato sat and tried to replace the image of that future first victim with a Tellarite or Andorian girl surprising and destroying a leering slavery-bent invader who then pleaded for his own miserable life.

The images eventually ceased their constant repetition, but never quite their competition. Yet Hoshi Sato understood herself just a little better.


	3. Terra Incognita

**Terra Incognita**  
by Rob Morris

"It's a little early in the game to have something like this happen."

Archer and his crew stared at the viewer, fixed on the planet's surface, focusing on fine detail as it never could on the vast expanse of space. Problem was--there was nothing to focus on. Tucker held up an opened palm as he shrugged.

"No colony flag, no center of town. Hell--no town. First thing the yokels do is proclaim that they have a place. But they don't. They don't even have a they."

Reed read the same scans, and repeated it all from his angle.

"No sign of weapons' discharge. There's neither plasma, sulfur--or for that matter, sulfa. No signs of a fight, or the things people do after a fight. I'm tempted to see if anyone inscribed 'Crotoan' on some of the trees. Except we can't go down there, can we?"

Hoshi spoke of the incredibly obvious, but no one at all pointed this out.

"There is no human above the age of two who doesn't carry multiple forms of communication technology, either on or in their person. Even when we die, many of these things are designed to continue at ridiculous ranges and through insane obstacles. Except--except right now."

Doctor Phlox was a man who prided himself on the thought that every mystery had a solution, or the pieces of a solution. Pride goeth before, and sometimes it goeth after.

"You humans make your presence known. Once you have been someplace, no matter how cleanly you might be, something of you remains behind. But I'm not even reading dandruff flakes, and I know something about that residue. A report on it formed the basis of my final thesis paper. I have to wonder if I'd deserve that high grade now, in light of this."

Mayweather put the final nail in the search for Terra Colony 10.

"Colonists always have a stash of junk food, meant to be opened when planetfall is made. We used to trade well when one of them would pass us by. In fact--we met these people. You would have thought dill garlic pickles were spun gold. But garlic isn't native to this world, and I am not reading an herb that is not exactly known for simply dissipating. Trust a man who's born to shipboard life. Even a single garlic pickle will make its presence known, and rapidly."

Archer sighed, and performed yet another grim task. He shuddered a bit at how he no longer shuddered a lot at such things.

"Then let it be known that on this date, the Earth colony Terra Nova Tin--I mean TerraTin--"

He breathed in, and tried again.

"...Terra Nova Number Ten was found to have vanished without a trace. Fearing a similar fate from a force we cannot at all define or detect or confirm the existence of, we are breaking orbit and recommending against further colonization of this world. Creation bless and keep these lost souls."

At least with the prior 'lost' Terra Nova colony, there had been obvious remains and survivors. No such luck here. Its solution lay a century ahead, and with a very different Starship Enterprise.

"It's a little early in the game to have something like this happen." 


	4. Little Girl Bridge

Summary: In an AU to 'Terra Prime', Phlox presents Trip and T'Pol with a painful choice

* * *

Little Girl Bridge

by Gojirob

Phlox was blunt.

"I can save Elizabeth, but it comes at a high price."

Tucker shook his head.

"Do I need to say it?"

T'Pol tried to calm him.

"Trip, I do not believe the Doctor refers to a cost that we will pay."

Tucker accepted the calm across their link.

"Well, who then? Not Elizabeth. She's paid as much as she's ever going to, you can make book on that."

Phlox rose up.

"The very same instability that those fools placed in when they created her in such a slapdash manner provides me with a very narrow out. But you both must be fully aware of the consequences of this procedure."

Almost feeling death swooping closer to the innocent, the two nodded after glancing at each other. Phlox pointed to one of his seemingly endless medicinary creatures.

"This little fellow is far gentler than it looks. It's also far more dangerous than you can imagine. Once it tastes a sample of your DNA, it will want more. In fact, it will want it all. I use it to clean wounds of people contaminated by other species, when that other DNA might prove harmful."

"And this helps Elizabeth how?"

"Trip, if I am not mistaken, Doctor Phlox means to use that creature to back out one of her competing genetic structures. She will no longer be torn apart by her poorly-synthesized duality."

"Darlin', I know just a little bit about this. Doc, you can't do that. Her genetic integrity will fall to nothing. She'll die a worse death than what she's facing right now."

"Commander Tucker, do you honestly believe I'd propose such a thing? As one set of DNA is emptied, I intend to refill it with properly synthesized DNA from the now-dominant parent genes."

"Sooooo, she'll be either just Vulcan or just Human. A singular clone of one of us, instead of a binary. My God, that's a hell of a choice."

"And one, as you've likely surmised, that must be made soon."

T'Pol had closed her eyes, just after Phlox made his proposal. She now opened them.

"What will she be, after you are done?"

Phlox knew several good Italian doctors, and the way his hands now broadly gestured as he spoke, one would think he'd been adopted by their families. At least on Wednesday evening suppers, this was not far off from being true.

"She will either be a Vulcan with an attraction and proclivity towards things Human, or a Human with the inverse bent. There will still be the barest traces of the recessive parent's influence. It's necessary to avoid genetic crash, so to speak."

T'Pol lightly touched Tucker's hand.

"I think she should be Human. Despite the new government, a Vulcan child with such leanings might not be treated as kindly as we would want."

This once, Tucker had realized something T'Pol had not.

"T'Pol, we're not gonna play any part in raising her."

She seemed confused.

"Why? She is ours. We both still have relatives who would aid us, when our duties call us away."

Trip sighed.

"Elizabeth Tucker is a polarizing symbol to two worlds. I won't let her grow up as some bigot's rallying point. Whatever we do with that sweet baby girl, darlin', it makes no difference at all. Elizabeth Tucker the Second has got to die. The next looney that gets big-time racist ideas is gonna have to look at someone else's kid."

T'Pol nodded.

"Most logical. It is odd that I did not consider that myself."

Phlox smiled.

"A condition, Commanders, that I call motherhood."

"But then, where will she go?"

"If you both don't mind, I have a family in mind. They're Vulcan translators, and they wrote a large part of Miss Sato's database in that regard. They live in Minnesota, and both have enough medical training to ensure that Elizabeth will not have to see outside doctors until she is mature, and her nature harder to detect."

Trip caught a tear from his own eye.

"If T'Pol says yes--then let's get moving. We have to plan her funeral and make the lie of it stick."

T'Pol wondered what her own infant face would have looked like, were her blood red, and her defining features totally gone. She would find out soon.

"Yes. Please begin, Doctor."

-----------

SIX YEARS LATER...

Jonathan's speech was done, and the dinner was also nearly finished. T'Pol felt the exhaustion of herself and all her friends. Unthinkingly, she pushed her dessert away. Little eyes brought a hungry visitor to her table.

"Are you gonna eat that?"

"No--you may have it."

The child smiled broadly.

"Great. I love Pecan Pie. It makes you feel good inside."

Before T'Pol could react, a mother who was doing her best to keep a secret moved on the little one.

"Lizzie Grayson! Just how many pieces of that pie are you going to eat? I..."

Realizing who she was standing near, Alicia Grayson sent the little girl off to the arms of the only father she would ever know.

"She's healthy. And she just has so much interest in all things Vulcan. She wants to be a translator, like we are."

T'Pol allowed a light smile.

"I thank you. And he thanks you as well."

"But I---thought-- Commander Tucker died recently."

T'Pol saw the child making a run for yet more pie as her father chased her.

"Yet he is here, with us."


	5. Archery

Archer Knows Jack  
by Rob Morris

After just about the worst night he'd had on Enterprise, minus an attack, Captain Archer couldn't believe his ears.

"What do you mean, the pieces are too thick? We got the specs from you people!"

The ceremonial path made from the carved wood. The braids. The lack of clothing, not to mention sleep. The dismissal of Porthos' near-death. Now this.

"Those thicknesses are for a general ceremony in the main hall before all the great houses. If you humans knew from courtesy, you would have checked that in this House, a differing thickness was not only called for, but demanded!"

Archer felt his vision begin to fog.

"Very well. I will start again. But my traditions demand that before attempting a second such apology, I perform a scene from the works of one of Earth's great literary masters. In fact, it was written--by a King."

The council-members nodded.

"That would be most welcomed. We were not aware of such a default tradition among your people."

Archer closed his eyes, and spoke.

"I give you--The Tale Of The Shining Ones."

The council brimmed with anticipation. But the Enterprise crew pulled out. Trip gulped.

"Maybe we coulda gotten by on just four injectors."

T'Pol fought off the shakes.

"Perhaps it is time to act on--certain tensions."

Hoshi shrugged.

"Well, I guess it's just their turn to lose their tops."

Archer began his tale--by firing up the chainsaw. He grinned and sneered wildly.

"HEEEERREEE'SS JOHHHHNNNY!!!!"

* * *

Archer is Swept Away  
by Rob Morris

Hoshi nodded and acceded to her Captain's request, but not without comment.

"All right, I'll wear a shirt. But why do men have to be such little boys about all this? T'Pol doesn't have to wear a shirt most times!"

Archer shrugged.

"She's Maxim-Hot. You are real-world hot. I mean, don't you think I feel the same resentment towards Trip?"

"I--I hadn't considered that, sir."

He nodded.

"Hoshi, it's up to those of us that look like people other people could actually meet to balance off the hyper-idealized ones."

She raised a finger.

"Can't I just walk around with my arms crossed?"

"No! That's even more provocative! Hoshi, ever since we found out that the nerds on Buffy had a life-size cut-out of T'Pol--I'm afraid the safe-fantasy burden's been on you. Now, any ship's business?"

"Well, these archeologists on Earth found a 300-year-old android's head in San Francisco."

"Tell them to put it back where they found it. Next?"

"We've sighted an old cargo ship on sensors. We think it's called The Botany Bay."

"Alter course and speed to avoid. Next."

"We've discovered evidence that a techno-billionaire in 1996 may have been utilizing 29th Century...."

"Not our problem. Next."

"The Vulcan database says that those goofy big-eared pirates we encountered are called...."

Archer glared at her. Hoshi gulped.

"Errr..we still have no idea what they're called."

"Good. Next?"

"A new holographic amusement park just opened on Earth....."

The glare again.

"...but it really sucks badly, and we'll never see anything like it on this ship. Yeah."

A being then appeared and taunted Archer.

"You humans are such amoebas, when compared to the Continu..."

Hoshi shot the being dead with her phase pistol.

"Sorry, sir. Won't happen again. Lastly, certain of our outermost colonies have been disappearing, as though scooped away by a giant space shovel."

"Its 2152. We barely have innermost colonies, and all of them are accounted for. Anything else?"

"Oh. You wanted to reseal Daniels' quarters."

So the two went down on the turbolift.

"Elevator. We went down on the elevator."

Sorry, Captain. Hoshi opened the quarters anew.

"What the hell?"

At a table in the room sat a man in a yellow tunic with sandy-brown hair. Beside him sat a woman with a red tunic, her hair in a bun. Beside her sat two bald or balding men, one dark-skinned with a goatee, the other pale-ish with a ring of crown-like hair. He shooed them off.

"Go on about your business. Pretend like we aren't even here."

Archer sealed the quarters tighter than ever. He looked at Hoshi.

"Don't open that ever again--except for November, February, and May. Oh--and you can relax your dress code then, too."

Hoshi walked off, smiling.

"Yes! This girl is going starkers!"

In the distance, T'Pol wept unseen, silent tears.

"But I'm a model!!! I should get all the attention!"


	6. Fusion Failure

**Fusion Failure**  
by Rob Morris

VULCAN, 2155

Depending largely on one's point of view, a new order on Vulcan was either underway or had been averted. Someone that a future captain of a very different Enterprise would one day call 'all of Vulcan in one package' was emerging to become the prime mover of a planet and a people seeking a path closer to the near-sacred figure of Surak.

In her improved position, Lady T'Pau had gained the ability to finally raise questions those now out of power and favor had summarily squelched. Before her were Vulcan's own Commander T'Pol as well as Earth's fractious but reliable Captain Jonathan Archer. Both had a chance to look over the file presented, and reached the same conclusion about it.

"The events in question occurred not long after our mission first began. This file's account bears some similarities to the events we lived through. But much of that file is a fabrication, and that fabrication is not ours."

Archer normally would have been disgusted by what he saw. But the exhausting events of the past weeks, and perhaps the carriage of Surak's own katra kept much of this from reaching the surface.

"T'Pol's right. This is some kind of---reconciled---version of what happened to us. I knew there might be a problem."

"You knew this?"

"What I mean, Lady, is that when I contacted the High Command concerning the very odd behavior of these supposed Vulcans, I was roundly disputed as to whether or not any of it actually occurred."

T'Pau considered what had been said.

"Captain, you were not known for cooperation with the High Command."

Archer nodded.

"Truer words. But when you run into almost openly emotional Vulcans, any misgivings about whether to report it seem to fall down flat on their face. I was expecting some disbelief, to be sure. But the total rejection of our account was surprising, even with my differences with the High Command."

T'Pol tapped a comm relay.

"Lady T'Pau, our ship's database contains the original, unaltered version of events, including the true names of those we encountered."

T'Pau accepted the file, but like her apparently corrupt predecessors, found it difficult to accept on more than one level. One level was that her people had lied and altered documents. Another was what the unaltered document said.

* * *

USS ENTERPRISE NX-01, 2151

Archer saw the small contingent emerge from the airlock. When the leader, a Vulcan man named Skolamot, offered his hand to shake, it took Archer a full minute to realize what exactly had transpired, and they were halfway down the connecting foyer before he spoke up.

"I apologize, Skolamot, if you thought that casual personal contact was necessary aboard a Human ship. We would never require you to do such a thing."

The eyes of the leader darted quickly to his subordinate, another man named Sciedu. He would be informed later of how close his name sounded to an English non-sense word used to exclaim excitement. But for now, he merely answered for his superior.

"Captain Archer, we here-departed Vulcan-some time ago. We choose not to adhere to a great many of its recent strictures."

* * *

In the galley, as Sciedu chuckled openly about the soundalike, 'Skidoo', Mayweather grabbed three lonely slabs of meatloaf, wondering how seven large portions had vanished, even with Mister Tucker's legendary love of such comfort foods.

"To the young, make good use of catsup."

But then, he beheld the engineer with his own three slices, and sat with him as they both stared in wonder and outright shock at four of the female Vulcans, sitting at the next table.

"Sir--are they doing what I think they're doing?"

If they had been dancing nude atop the tables, the shock would have been a little less, because Vulcans not concerned by illogical modesty frequented hot spas and exercise rooms on Earth.

"Travis--your eyes are as good as mine."

The meatloaf was vanishing in large, bitten-off chunks, held by hands that were then licked clean of the tomato sauce that covered the meal. One held up a potato, much to their relief. This relief vanished when she stuffed her remaining meat scraps into it. She looked at them.

"Am I to understand that those remain on Vulcan only eat this pocket-like vegetable, when made available to them?"

"Yes."

"You are--correct, Ma'am."

Half the tuber was gone in a snapping bite.

"Such utter waste. Tell me, is there more of that soured cream about?"

Tucker raised a finger.

"That's a dairy product, you know."

That drew a glare from the woman, called T'Noaj.

"That is not what I asked you. Do Humans have their rules of behavior dictated to them by those who stayed?"

Another of the women, T'Rad, grabbed her hand harshly.

"You will apologize to our hosts. Meals are scarce, good meals are scarcer. Do you wish to be dining on bland soup?"

The apology was given, but the two men began to pull out soon after. Tucker saw Skolamot smiling in front of an emptied pie-tin.

"You were correct, Mister Tucker. My soul feels very good indeed."

* * *

2155

T'Pau asked Archer for commentary, and, his annoyance rising at the apparent cover-up, he responded with pleasure.

"They came to me soon after this. Trip pointed out the obvious, although he had stopped by Phlox to confirm it all. Take the heat a Vulcan body produces. Take the copper content of your blood. Add as much sugar as Skolamot's people had been taking in, way past recommended limits. In large amounts, cane sugar ferments in Vulcan blood. Uncle Zef told me of what his oatmeal raisin cookies did to that first post-Phoenix visitation. It marked the only time he really apologized for anything he did during first contact. Well, besides regretting getting a young female psychiatrist blasted drunk. These people should have been walking distilleries, but it's we who were taken off balance."

T'Pol nodded.

"What Mister Mayweather had to say was of no greater comfort. It was only after he spoke that I realized how actively I was avoiding our visitors. The Captain recommended I maintain that distance, citing a belief in 'gut instinct' that while I still do not fully comprehend, I find much harder to dispute."

* * *

2151

Mayweather did not hold back.

"Vulcans who live offworld offer witticisms. They don't tell jokes. They eat cheese. They do not eat meat. They allow their mouths to fully upturn, in small gatherings. They do not laugh in open company. In my time, I've met those whose emotional control was inadequate by their standards. But the very worst of them could still easily be guards in front of the Buckingham Arts Museum in London."

The former trader kept on.

"Sir, these aren't Vulcans. These are frat boys and sorority girls with glued-on ears and stenciled eyebrows. Respectfully suggest that they might even pose a threat to us." -

* * *

2155

Archer made a concession to both Vulcan women

"That I dismissed his words is proof that a chair does not confer wisdom, and it certainly does not provide divinity. To my mind, these people, though odd, still looked like Vulcans and talked like Vulcans and walked like Vulcans. For the record, I did not get wise, until someone wiser than me failed to be on time for her very vital job."

* * *

2151

Hoshi Sato waited at the Bridge door, letting her Captain ask what she knew he would.

"He wanted to what?!"

"To mind-meld with me, sir. He said he wanted to know about the most recent Vulcan homeworld dialect changes--and then he had some explicit suggestions about our later positions. He waited outside my quarters for hours, till I lost track of the time. I had three crewmen escort me here."

"Was that necessary?"

Hoshi bit her lip. The next words brought it all home.

"Captain, to get away from him, I would have used the transporter to beam in here!"

Asking Mayweather and a security guard to tend the Command Center, Archer then took Hoshi, Trip and Reed to the galley, center of an ongoing party the Captain was now determined to end. Seeing their guests having more of Trip's favorite, Archer pushed away the tins from in front of the confused indulgers, and pointed to the massive security presence behind him.

"No-more-pie."

* * *

2155

"It was with the communications officer the meld was offered?"

T'Pol nodded.

"Again, the original report also states that later, I realized I had been compromised while asleep. This was well after the departure of our guests. I fear that the obfuscation in the record continued to accumulate to my detriment during my diagnosis of Pa'Nar syndrome. Though what part this series of lies played in the efforts to stigmatize mind-melds in general I cannot say. Your own efforts to grant me relief have made all this even clearer. I broke the meld upon awakening, and the Captain's order to see them off the ship was already in place."

"Yet you pressed no charges."

"My general distaste for this group already had me avoiding them. That they were leaving overwhelmed me on an emotional level. The Captain will attest to my increased meditation sessions following this."

"And if I had known, I would have bound over the whole lot of them to the first Vulcan ship I found. Under guard, I watched every last one enter the airlock, and then I had Phlox scan for any we missed. I wanted these people gone. So T'Pol was not the only one acting emotionally---by that I mean, more emotionally than I cared to allow. That is also noted in the original report. They, to use a Terran phrase, rubbed everyone on Enterprise the wrong way."

T'Pol was at greater peace than she had been in some years, yet moved to quell a sense of growing unease.

"Lady T'Pau---will there be an enquiry?"

"This thing will be neither kept quiet nor will it be spoken of openly. The obstruction of investigation is itself disturbing, yet not so much as the simple matter of—of—"

If she struggled for words, Archer did not.

"Of who in the Hell these people really were?"

Rather than comment on or correct the Human's choice of words, T'Pau confirmed them.

"Indeed. For I fear their true identity may be a dire thing. A very dire thing. T'Pol? Will thee hear an old story?"

"I would hear your story, Lady."

A curious Archer nodded.

"So would I."

The woman with a now greater burden than ever told a tale that T'Pol knew by heart, and that Archer felt a 'campfire resonance' with.

"…many questions arose. Their traveling companion looked like any other Vulcan, but he acted nothing like them. The twins wondered at his odd habits, to eat flesh, to laugh out, to scheme and lie, and to grab at them while doing so. Was he mad, they asked him? But he was gone before they at last left the desert, and so they asked their parents instead. Their parents told them to never seek this boy again, for he was surely Rihannsu, one of those that departed so long ago. For the Rihannsi might not be living things but dead ones, with cold dead eyes. Or they might be dread war-lovers. But, asked the twins, did not Surak say that the Rihannsi would return to us one day, and that only then would there be the fusion of reunification? Yes, their parents told them. But until that day, it was best to believe that Those Who Left were perhaps no longer Vulcan at all."

Even though the identity of T'Pol's attacker was still not clear, Archer was pleased to have this old matter somewhat done with.

"Commander?"

"Captain?"

"What did happen to 'Those That Left'? Even Surak's own memories—what I could glimpse—didn't have the answer. So where did they go?"

T'Pol glanced back at the office they had both sat in.

"I do not know. But I think that Lady T'Pau believes that one day soon, we will know the answer to that old riddle, and that we may not like it any more than the Learning Twins of the old fables. What do you believe?"

Archer shook his head.

"I believe that all that stuff in the altered report about sick relatives on the High Council and such indicated someone who was skilled and practiced at lying. Even smooth about it. Vulcans can lie, but not smoothly."

"Which causes you to believe that the fallen members of the High Command had non-Vulcan aid in crafting it."

Archer sighed.

"Before we break orbit, I'm gonna have chef bake up two of Trip's Pecan pies. One for us, one for the Lady in there."

T'Pol nodded in agreement.

"Good for the katra."


	7. There Will Be Pie

Title : There Will be Pie

Author : 'Goji' Rob Morris

Series : ENT

Type : Halloween story, Dark Humor

Part : 1/1

Characters : Tucker, T'Pol, Archer

Rating : PG13, for implied horror

Summary : Why is T'Pol acting so dictatorial—and what might an angry crew do in revenge? All is not as it seems in a fairly grim tale.

There Will Be Pie

By Rob Morris

Once upon a time, there was a starship named Enterprise, the first to be named this. One day, its Captain received news he didn't like at all.

"A Vulcan officer named T'Pol will be joining us. We'll have to make some adjustments."

T'Pol came aboard, and made certain demands right away.

"I will not abide the eating of meat. Not by myself, nor any who serve with me."

The crew grumbled, but Starfleet abided by the treaty and issued the order she demanded.

"This crew is inefficient and must improve. Leisure time is to be cut in half."

Again, the crew grumbled, but Captain Archer gave in, having no choice. At last, something came up that drove all the crew to distraction.

"These pies, while having no meat, were made with butter taken from living creatures held in captivity. I will not abide them."

Trip Tucker watched as his sanity-saving Pecan Pie was tossed away.

"Sub-Commander, you do not want to do that."

"That remark will see you on report, Mister Tucker. In fact, all of you may consider yourselves…"

Though small, Hoshi Sato struck her across the back of her head, and then Travis Mayweather caught T'Pol as she fell. T'Pol in a haze heard metal being sharpened. She also heard the words of Charles Tucker.

"Old Civil War recipe, Darlin, for those hard times when towns went under siege, adapted for the modern day. Two bans lifted in one stroke."

She saw the knives descend.

"Vulcan Pie…good for the soul."

---------------

"Trip?"

Tucker saved his story document, turned off his monitor, and looked at Archer.

"Yeah, Jonathan?"

"I told T'Pol she was unnecessarily harsh back on that one planet last week. Can I ask you to apologize for the more…colorful.. turns of phrase you used?"

Tucker shrugged.

"For the words themselves, sure. Not for the dispute. She was in the wrong."

Archer sighed.

"I just want two of my top officers to get along."

"We get along okay. When we have a dust-up, she has her meditation…"

Tucker smiled and shrugged as he worked out an ending involving serving a piece of his special pie to Soval.

"…and I have my own ways of handling it."

To his credit, Tucker always deleted these stories after about a day, and showed them to no one. The day even came when he began a relationship with T'Pol, and mind-melded with her on occasion.

And when she glimpsed the memory of these stories, the real horror began.


End file.
